SA-11/17 Buk Missile System

By now you’ve seen speculation that the Malaysian Airlines flight in Ukraine was brought down by a “Buk” missile system. The NATO code name for this system is either SA-11 GADFLY or SA-17 GRIZZLY for the follow-on variant. The Russian (and Ukraine) name for the system is “Buk.”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSXMhaFntrU]

Both Russia and Ukraine operate the Buk. And the pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine claim to have captured some.

A Buk battery consists of a command post vehicle, a surveillance radar vehicle, several launcher vehicles, and vehicles carrying reloads. But the SA-11/17 can be fired and guided solely from its launcher vehicle, without integrating with the command post and surveillance radar.

The system is highly mobile, and intended to provide air defense for army formations in the field, though Ukraine does also use it as a portion of their fixed national air defense network protecting its cities and critical infrastructure.

Nice to see that the Russian radar console hasn’t changed much since my days of operating an MSQ T-2 ECM radar. ( copy of Russian SAM Foxtrot/Golf band radar.) The only thing I noticed missing was the hand wheels to slew the radar around.

I also noticed you still have to get the target pip into the range gate before you can lock-on to the target.

How complex is one of these to operate? Could we be seeing some semi-literate peasant managing to shoot down an airliner between bottles of vodka, a pro-Russia veteran of the Ukrainian or Russian army who dimly remembers running one of this 10 years ago, or does this require an active military unit (either Russian or Ukrainian)?

It wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn that at least some of the pro-Russian separatists were former members of the Ukrainian Army air defense troops. They would likely be capable of operating the Buk at least to some degree.

Incidentally, I suspect this was a single launcher engagement, not netted in with the CP and surveillance radar. That would increase the likelihood of misidentifying an airliner for a turboprop transport.

Or the Russians could have let “volunteers” from their own air defense troops operate the system.

Hard to believe these idiots didn’t realize this wasn’t a military aircraft. When the radar started ‘painting’ it and locked on, the aircraft didn’t start any evasive maneuvers or jamming. A military pilot would have been jamming and juking that plane all over the sky to try and break lock.

As far as operating it…it took me about two weeks to learn the fundamentals of operating the T-2 enough to be able to lock it on a target, but that was as a trained operator of a different system and I had to lock on through jamming.